Never leaves the launchpad.
A photo gallery of Martian landforms and surface features, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s powerful HiRISE camera.
A failure in both concept and execution, this set of big, square close-ups not only renders HiRISE’s extraordinarily high-resolution shots as, too often, murky blurs, but pairs them to passages of commentary that don’t consistently mention essentials like scale and location—or even seem to be describing what’s on display. Slade offers just a small wedge of what she vaguely dubs a “colossal crater,” for instance, while leaving viewers to search for invisible “channels in the ice” carved among unexplained hillocks at the Martian south pole and wondering what the dark, brushlike formations that seem to be sticking up from “northern sandy dunes” even are. She just swoons over the planet’s “gorgeous rocky layers” and “lovely linear ridges” while building up to a rhapsodic finale (“completely breathtaking!… / Mars is more amazing than anyone ever imagined!”) in immense type. Capped by a closing timeline that asks readers to believe that Mars was “first discovered” in the 1600s, this outing offers neither the information nor the inspiration of similar photo essays like Seymour Simon’s Mars (1987) and Elizabeth Rusch’s Mighty Mars Rovers (2012).
Never leaves the launchpad. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-68263-188-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Peachtree
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
An in-depth and visually pleasing look at one of the most fundamental forces in the universe.
An introduction to gravity.
The book opens with the most iconic demonstration of gravity, an apple falling. Throughout, Herz tackles both huge concepts—how gravity compresses atoms to form stars and how black holes pull all kinds of matter toward them—and more concrete ones: how gravity allows you to jump up and then come back down to the ground. Gravity narrates in spare yet lyrical verse, explaining how it creates planets and compresses atoms and comparing itself to a hug. “My embrace is tight enough that you don’t float like a balloon, but loose enough that you can run and leap and play.” Gravity personifies itself at times: “I am stubborn—the bigger things are, the harder I pull.” Beautiful illustrations depict swirling planets and black holes alongside racially diverse children playing, running, and jumping, all thanks to gravity. Thorough backmatter discusses how Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity and explains Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. While at times Herz’s explanations may be a bit too technical for some readers, burgeoning scientists will be drawn in.
An in-depth and visually pleasing look at one of the most fundamental forces in the universe. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668936849
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tilbury House
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A lighthearted first look at an increasingly useful skill.
Grown-ups may not be the only audience for this simple explanation of how algorithms work.
Taking a confused-looking hipster parent firmly in hand, a child first points to all the computers around the house (“Pro Tip: When dealing with grown-ups, don’t jump into the complicated stuff too fast. Start with something they already know”). Next, the child leads the adult outside to make and follow step-by-step directions for getting to the park, deciding which playground equipment to use, and finally walking home. Along the way, concepts like conditionals and variables come into play in street maps and diagrams, and a literal bug stands in for the sort that programmers will inevitably need to find and solve. The lesson culminates in an actual sample of very simple code with labels that unpack each instruction…plus a pop quiz to lay out a decision tree for crossing the street, because if “your grown-up can explain it, that shows they understand it!” That goes for kids, too—and though Spiro doesn’t take the logical next step and furnish leads to actual manuals, young (and not so young) fledgling coders will find plenty of good ones around, such as Get Coding! (2017), published by Candlewick, or Rachel Ziter’s Coding From Scratch (2018).
A lighthearted first look at an increasingly useful skill. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9781623543181
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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